NatureNOW

The Mind of the Chimpanzee

What do we know about how chimpanzees think and reason? Over the weekend Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago held an international multidisciplinary conference on chimpanzee cognition.

Top scientists who study chimpanzees in the wild and in captive situations to explore what is known about chimps' cognitive mechanism, culture, tool use, cooperation, reasoning and communication, and conservation. It's inspiring that the organizers worked hard to come up with a mix of established scientists and the new generation of scientists to ensure that there's continuity and mentoring as this important research continues into the next decade.

Planet Earth - Spectacular Series

If you enjoy connecting with nature by watching nature shows, I hope you've heard about the new 11 part series on Discovery - Planet Earth. You don't want to miss this event!

More than five years in the making, PLANET EARTH redefines blue-chip natural history filmmaking and continues the Discovery Channel mission to provide the highest quality programming in the world. The 11-part series will amaze viewers with never-before-seen animal behaviors, startling views of locations captured by cameras for the first time, and unprecedented high-definition production techniques. Award-winning actress and conservationist Sigourney Weaver is the series' narrator.

My husband and I watched the first segment tonight...we have two more to watch on tape. The scenes are stunning, haunting, clear, and all together beautiful...often from points of view that we've never seen before. I've watched quite a number of nature shows over the years and I can safely say I saw a number of animals and scenes I've never seen before. By the way, the interactive site for the Planet Earth series is also quite intriguing.

Bison...Ten Miles from Denver?

US Fish and Wildlife Service announced yesterday that they've released sixteen wild bison from the National Bison Range in Montana into the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge.

This is an exciting development because bison are a key part of a short-grass prairie ecosystem. With bison back in the area, the habitat is likely to change in ways that will attract and support a variety of animals.

• Their grazing leaves short grass that's perfect for the prairie dog colonies.
• With prairie dogs in the area, a variety of predators and raptors will have a food source.
• The bison also have an impact on the earth itself. Not only do they deposit nutrients, but they also create wallows that collect water.
• A variety of birds are attracted to the wallows.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service hopes to add more herds to the area if this first herd does well.

Reclaiming this unique ecosystem depends on how well the bison do. I'll keep you posted as I hear more.

Bald Eagle Nest...in Philly

According to a recent Associated Press article, the Pennsylvania Game Commission stated that in 1983 there were only three nesting pairs of bald eagles in Pennsylvania.

Last year more than 100 nests were found throughout the state--more than at any other time in the last century.

And now, authorities have found a bald eagle nest within the Philadelphia city limits...for the first time in 200 years.

Although there's no guarantee that the pair of bald eagles that built this nest will mate successfully, isn't it a sign of hope that bald eagles are resilient enough to be making such a marked comeback.

New Era of Oceanic Research

A ground breaking project is in process in the Monterey Bay that will allow oceanic experiments to run 24/7 all year round. The observations and discoveries that will result from this project will no doubt be astonishing.

The Monterey Accelerated Research System (MARS) is a 32 mile undersea copper fiber-optic power cable that can run up to eight simultaneous experiments and then send the results back to the researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute at Moss Landing. From there, the results can be transmitted to scientists all over the world. According to the MARS site:

"The MARS facilities will allow researchers to develop the tools and protocols necessary to take advantage of a sea floor power supply, real-time, high-bandwidth data transfer, and real-time control of experiments. The MARS system is designed so that tools and protocols developed here will be readily transferable to other cabled observatories as they come on line."

This Monterey Bay system is the first test site for a $300 Million Ocean Observatories Initiative that will ultimately link along the western coast to a similar system off Vancouver, Canada.

The experiment results that I'm looking forward to hearing about...the images that low light cameras will take of sea creatures by the light of their own bioluminescence...without the noise of a submersible or submarine. What will these shy animals show us when they are undisturbed in their underwater environs?

Bringing an Urban Creek Back to Life

I was heartened to read in this mornings paper about the restoration of the 6 mile Sausal Creek that runs from the Oakland hills down to the San Francisco Bay.

Beginning in 1997 a group of people with the same mission began meeting every weekend to clean up the creek. On March 24th the Friends of Sausal Creek celebrate their 10th anniversary. If you do the math, this group has given 520 weekends to this project over the years.

The work was no picnic either - clearing brush, removing trash, digging out non natives, planting native trees and bushes, and removing concrete channels to return it to its nature state. Early on they'd run across evidence of drug use, the homeless, and thieves in the area.

Now the beautiful results are felt by all. Negative influences have given way to parks where children play in surroundings of natural beauty.

What a wonderful example and model of how much things in nature can change when we work together to give it a boost.

Reed Warbler Rediscovered - Last Seen in 1867

Last March, Philip Round, an ornithologist at Bangkok's Mahidol University, was doing some research near a water treatment facility in Thailand and caught a bird that didn't look like the other warblers in the area. This particular bird had a longer beak and shorter wings than the others.

Then he realized he might be holding a large billed reed warbler that hadn't been seen since 1867 when it was first discovered. He sent the DNA and photos off to Staffan Bensch of Sweden's Lund University for confirmation. He confirmed it was indeed a valid species.

Later one other specimen was found at the Natural History Museum in England...from 1869!

Little else is known about this species at this time. Will be interesting to see how this develops as more people watch for this species after thinking it was extinct all this time.

Imagine the thrill of seeing a species after so much time.

Action for Nature - Young People Taking Action for the Environment

The other night while watching the news I heard about an organization called Action For Nature (AFN.) This USA-based nonprofit organization "inspires young people to take action for the environment and protect the natural world in their own neighborhood and around the world."

Our local news highlighted one of the young people who had been named one of the 2006 International Young Eco-Heroes. Evan Green, 10 years old, inspired friends, neighbors, and acquaintances to participate in conservation fund raiser called Bowl the Planet. The end result...his team has "raised enough money to save more than 16 acres of threatened habitat in the Guanacaste Conservation Area of Costa Rica, which contains about 300,000 species of organisms in tropical dry forest, cloud forest, and rain forest - roughly 2.4% of the world's terrestrial biodiversity."

Migrating Birds See No Borders

The other day I saw an interesting story about a specialist in migratory birds who sees these birds as a powerful tool for peace. As he notes, birds flying overhead don't see any borders as they fly from their summer habitat to their winter habitat.

In addition to his scientific study, this scientist sponsors a field trip in Israel that brings Muslim, Christian, and Jewish students together to learn about the birds. During the field trip, the students split off into threesomes, with one member from each group. As they cooperate to work on their assignments they also get to know each other as individuals. It was a heartwarming sight to witness.

Unfortunately recent violence prevented the field trip this year, the scientist continues his quest to use his work with migratory birds to show the various communities that they do have something they all share - the environment!

(I'm sorry I don't have links to more information about this story...I didn't have a pen handy to mark down all the critical informtion, but the story stuck with me so I decided to share it anyway. My hope is my memory held the critical details accurately.)

Exploring the Flow of Nature

The other night my husband and I happened upon a television show called SPARK on our local PBS station that intrigued us both. The episode was called All Natural.

Chris Drury, a British land artist, used materials from nature to replicate processes found in nature and the body. As it happens Chris was the artist in residence at a local art center, Villa Montalvo in Saratoga, CA. He was on site this spring to create three installations - a 60 foot tall vortex out of willow branches that spiraled down around the length of a redwood tree. He also create a mural of enlarged fingerprints and a sculpture of vortex made out of pine needles.

His work reminded us of another land artist - Andy Goldsworthy also from Britain, who was focus of the movie Rivers and Tides.

Both of these artists connect with the land and nature to create art installations that blend with their surroundings as if they have always been there.

If you ever feel you want to find a new way to connect with nature, watch Rivers and Tides or visit the websites noted here to get a sense of how they express their connection.